On Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian entities involved in efforts to interfere in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 presidential election. Lawfare's Benjamin Wittes discusses what the indictment means for L'Affaire Russe and U.S. national security with David Kris, Paul Rosenzweig and Matt Tait.

Chuck Rosenberg spent most of his career leading or helping lead federal law enforcement agencies. Before serving as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Rosenberg served as Jim Comey’s chief of staff at the FBI and the Justice Department, as counselor to FBI director Robert Mueller, and as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Now outside government, Rosenberg shared his thoughts on leadership with a group of University of Virginia law students two weeks ago, and now, we’re sharing his thoughts with you. He says of this speech, “I was privileged to work with great leaders, mentors, and friends at the Department of Justice. I learned so much from them: Bob Mueller, Jim Comey, Sally Yates, John Ashcroft, and David Margolis, among others. I hope my words reflect the values these good people—and so many others at DOJ—consistently demonstrated. Kindness, civility, humility, fairness, and character remain in fashion.”

In his recent New York Times bestseller “Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic,” David Frum, senior editor of The Atlantic, lays out a compelling account of how President Donald Trump’s tendencies could push the United States toward the illiberalism that many Americans believe the republican system of government to be immune to. In an event on Feb. 7 at the Brookings Institution, Frum sat down with Jonathan Rauch, Elaine Kamarck, and Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes for a conversation and Q&A on the book and Trump’s threats to democracy.

On Friday, Rep. Devin Nunes, the House intelligence committee chairman, released a controversial and long-awaited memo alleging surveillance abuses by the Justice Department and FBI against Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. In this special edition of the Lawfare Podcast, Quinta Jurecic, Orin Kerr, David Kris and Benjamin Wittes unpack the memo, its charges, and what those charges mean for the Mueller investigation and the future of surveillance oversight.

Last week, CIA Director Mike Pompeo visited the American Enterprise Institute to join AEI Resident Fellow Marc Thiessen for a conversation to reflect on his first year running the agency and his vision for 2018 and beyond. They discussed the challenges posed by North Korea’s missile program, the war on terror, the Trump administration’s national security agenda, and the quotidian of being CIA director. Sorry to disappoint the curiousLawfarelistener out there, but no—there was no discussion of the Pompeo family fudge recipe sent to the CIA workforce—and Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes—with the director’s holiday card.

Lawfare contributor and University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck argued before the Supreme Court last week in United States v. Dalmazzi, a case concerning the appointment of military judges to the Court of Military Commission Review and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. Vladeck joined Scott Anderson on the Lawfare Podcast to discuss the complexities of the case, why it matters and what it’s like arguing before the nine justices.

The New York Times Thursday evening is reporting that back in June, President Trump tried to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller—but couldn't quite pull it off. We, however, pulled off a special edition of the podcast to go over the story. Joining Benjamin Wittes on the recorded conference call (pardon the audio quality) were Lawfare contributors Jack Goldsmith, Steve Vladeck, Carrie Cordero, and Bob Bauer.

It may seem like ages ago, but the false alarm about a missile heading towards Hawaii hasn't left our minds. Last week, Shannon Togawa Mercer interviewed a group of experts on the event: Stephan Haggard, political science professor at the University of California, San Diego; Garrett Graff, author and journalist; Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); and Paul Rosenzweig, Lawfare masthead contributing editor and former deputy assistant secretary for policy at DHS all joined in. They discussed what actually occurred and how it happened, the relationship between the federal and state governments in handling emergency responses like this, the political situation surrounding the alarm, and what would have happened if there actually had been a missile.

This week on the Lawfare Podcast, the Guardian's Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker joined special guest host Alina Polyakova to discuss his new book "The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past." They discussed Putin's use of Russian history as political strategy, the pulse of Russian politics as its elections approach in March, the changing landscape of Russia's outer cities, and much more.

Buzzfeed News has published a lengthy story by reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier entitled, "Investigators Are Scrutinizing Newly Uncovered Payments By The Russian Embassy." The story reports on an unusual set of wire transfers and movements of money by Russian diplomatic sources, including by former ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak in the period immediately surrounding Donald Trump's election and inauguration. The transactions, the story reports, are under scrutiny both from Special Counsel Robert Mueller and from the Senate Intelligence Committee. Cormier joined Benjamin Wittes on the podcast to discuss the story, the larger reporting stream of which it is a part, and what it may mean.